Midnight Basketball : Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy

Midnight basketball may not have been invented in Chicago, but the City of Big Shoulders--home of Michael Jordan and the Bulls--is where it first came to national prominence. And it's also where Douglas Hartmann first began to think seriously about the audacious notion that organizing young men to run around in the wee hours of the night--all trying to throw a leather ball through a metal hoop--could constitute meaningful social policy. Organized in the 1980s and '90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In Midnight Basketball, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book also brings to life the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men that the programs intended to serve. In the process, Midnight Basketball offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of the intricate ways sports, race, and risk intersect and interact in urban America.--Publisher website Midnight basketball may not have been invented in Chicago, but the City of Big Shoulders—home of Michael Jordan and the Bulls—is where it first came to national prominence. And it’s also where Douglas Hartmann first began to think seriously about the audacious notion that organizing young men to run around in the wee hours of the night—all trying to throw a leather ball through a metal hoop—could constitute meaningful social policy. Organized in the 1980s and ’90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In __Midnight Basketball__, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book also brings to life the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men that the programs intended to serve. In the process, __Midnight Basketball__ offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of the intricate ways sports, race, and risk intersect and interact in urban America. This book is about the late night basketball leagues organized in dozens of American cities in the late 1980s and early 1990s for purposes of social intervention, risk prevention, and crime reduction among African American youth and young men. The first chapters trace the historical origins and evolution of these programs set in the context of the social policy transformations of the era. As the chapters unfold, the book also analyzes the racial ideologies, cultures of sport, and policy debates that midnight basketball reveals and that endowed it with larger symbolic significance and political import. Ethnographic fieldwork is used in the final chapters to bring the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men they were intended to serve to life. Throughout, Midnight Basketball offers a nuanced understanding of the complicated and consequential ways in which sports, race, and risk intersect in contemporary American culture Organised in the 1980s and 90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In this book, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy